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February 26, 2010

Do you talk beyond the point of contribution?

I was facilitating a training class this week and asked participants one thing they loved and hated about meetings. Meetings are SOOOO expensive and it is important that every meeting should help move things forward with top velocity. One participant said she hates it when people talk beyond the point of contribution. What a great way to phrase a common problem!!! I told her it would make a great blog post title and here it is.

Twitter is just 140 characters. The best blog posts are often short and saturatedquickly get to the point. Should the same logic apply to meeting conversations?

Well, sort of. Yes, with a caveat. I am a proponent of great and deep conversation. That said, there is usually someone almosteverymost meetings has at least one over participator -someone who does not know how to make a clear and concise point at every meeting.

We have the "little book" from Strunk and White to help us learn how to write concisely. Where do we go to learn how to speak concisely? How does one best learn how to make a point and then STOP TALKING? It's not The Dale Carnegie Course or Toastmasters, these teach presentation more than conversation skills.

Perhaps we would get be better at talking right up to the point of highest contribution more effective if we wrote our thoughts down ahead of time. Those extra words and phrases (and circular thought patterns) are so much more obvious when you write, read, and then edit your messages.

Give it a try. Write what you want to say and then cut, cut, cut until you can make your point with 50% fewer words. I could go on about going on, but that would be rather ironic, now wouldn't it? But be careful not to strikethrough the best parts, OK?

This was very well said. There have been so times I have sat in a meeting and rolled my eyes back in my head, thinking, "Just get to the point!" But, I also know that especially if information is new, or complex, it can take several ways of expressing something before everyone gets it. We listen to things in different ways, and I worry that brief fast snippets like twitter bytes don't really engage people to work creatively and with each other from a deep place of listening. There is an interesting video with Werner Erhard talking about why we do what we do as human beings, and how the context of where we come from and how we listen matters. You might find it interesting. Why We Do What We Do: A New Model Providing Actionable Access to the Source of Performance